One of the most emblematic paintings by Salvador Dalí, known as Christ of San Juan de la Cruz, or simply The Christ, can be seen from today until April 30 at the Theater-Museum of Figueres. This work, painted in 1951 and acquired almost immediately by the Kelvingrove Museum in Glasgow, has been lent on very few occasions and is considered a key piece of the artist’s nuclear-mystical period.
For this occasion, the Figueres museum has prepared the Dalí exhibition. The Christ of Portlligat, in one of the rooms of the Galatea Tower, and includes, in addition to the aforementioned oil painting, six preparatory sketches, a notebook of drawings from that period (from the Pere Vehí archive), five photographs of the creative process and two audiovisuals . Next to Christ, he also exhibits The Bread Basket (1945), an oil painting from the museum that is displayed in the so-called Treasure Room. Both pieces were part of the I Hispano-American Biennial, held in Madrid and Barcelona at the beginning of 1952, along with two other classic works, La Madonna de Portlligat, currently in a Japanese museum, and La espiga, property of the Chanel foundation. As then, now the Christ is also displayed on a red velvet background.
Dalí finished painting this impressive oil painting, measuring 2.05 x 1.16 meters, in the summer of 1951 in Portlligat, whose landscape is reflected in the background of the painting. It was based on a drawing of the mystic Saint John of the Cross, preserved in the Monastery of the Encarnación in Ávila, very different from the usual iconography of the crucified Jesus Christ. It is a foreshortened vision, from above, in which the face of Jesus is not seen, stripped of other attributes such as the crown of thorns. He didn’t paint the nails or the wounds either. And yet Dalí used classic techniques, with a realism that comes from different photographs taken of a professional model, the actor Russ Saunders.
This exhibition was supposed to open in November 2020 but had to be suspended due to the pandemic. When the loan was approved by the Glasgow Administrative Committee and by the museum itself, it was announced that the work would be moved insured for a value of £30 million. The Christ is one of the works most appreciated by visitors to Kelvingrove, which is why they are very reluctant to give it up. It was its director Tom Honeyman who fell in love with this piece when he saw it for the first time and did everything possible to have it acquired by the city council, not without considerable controversy due to the price paid (£8,200 which also included the copyright ownership). On April 22, 1961, a visitor with mental problems cut it with a sandstone, causing a significant break in its lower part, although it could be restored. In the 1980s the painting was shot with an air gun, but the protective cover prevented further damage.
The exhibition was presented today by the president of the Gala-Salvador Dali Foundation, Jordi Mercader. The book Why, Dalí? The enigma as a provocation to art, with a text by the writer Javier Sierra, a dialogue between the painter Antonio López and the director of the Dalí museums, Montse Aguer, and other articles by Duncan Dornan, Pippa Stephenson, Carme Ruiz, Irene Civil, Laura Happy and Rosa M. Maurell.
